Mobile terminals are prevalent communication tools nowadays. When receiving calls or information, a mobile terminal may give a user a prompt, such as an audio ring tone prompt, a video prompt, a vibration prompt, and other prompts, for example, light twinkle.
In earlier phases, the ring tone of the mobile terminal is simple. With the development of technologies, the ring tone prompt of the mobile terminal develops from the earlier single ring tone to present 72 polyphonic ringers. Furthermore, music ring tones in MPEG-1 audio layer 3 (MP3) format and human voice ring tones are available.
Currently, the mobile terminal supports ring tones in the following formats: memory mapped files (MMF), musical instrument digital interface (MIDI), windows audio volume (WAV), adaptive multi-rate (AMR), MP3, iMelody ring tone format (IMY), ring tone transfer language (RTTL), and advanced audio coding (AAC). The MMF and MIDI formats are most used ones in the mobile terminal. The previous single ring tone of the mobile phone uses the IMY and RTTL formats.
For the generation of audio ring tone prompt information, two methods are available in the prior art.
One method is to customize a ring tone. This is a typical scheme for making a ring tone based on a mobile terminal or PC. The main idea of this method is to provide a piece of music to the user in terms of notes. That is, the user edits the ring tone of the mobile terminal according to the music represented by the defined notes. By entering such notes as “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, and “7”, the user can compose a piece of music according to his/her own interests and music ability. After composing the music, the software generates a ring tone and audio ring tone prompt information according to the music scores entered by the user. This method requires the user to have a certain music ability to customize a ring tone. In addition, the whole process is complex because the notes are entered through the mobile terminal or PC. Furthermore, the ring tone is simple due to limitation of music knowledge of the user.
The other method is to use an existing audio file as ring tone prompt information. For example, the audio file in such formats as MIDI, MP3, and OGG can be used as ring tone prompt information. A complete audio file lasts about three minutes, but a normal calling process lasts less than one minute. Thus, it is improper to use the audio file as the ring tone.
During the implementation of the present invention, the inventor discovers at least the following problems in the prior art:
In the method for generating prompt information of a mobile terminal in the prior art, the process of generating prompt information is complex, or the length is beyond control, and multiple pieces of prompt information cannot be generated at the same time.